Katharina Baron: I Sold My Soul For This View

It’s 3 am and I am stuck at the Chateau Marmont after the Golden Globes, waiting till my stalker gets arrested.

My friend had a party in his hotel room and this guy was following me around all evening. I kept pushing him away, but he would not leave me alone. He was claiming he was some billionaire and trying to impress me. Apparently, he harassed two other women that night, and tried to touch them in a very inappropriate way.

“We are getting him arrested”, said my friend. “He is going to rape someone tonight. I can tell.”

 The fun was over and I thought that this would not have happened a few years ago. Four police cars had arrived and my friend said: “I don’t want to imagine what he would have done. I saw how he kept coming back to you.”

Maybe, just maybe, things are slowly changing. Men are changing and taking responsibility.

Welcome to the post-MeToo era.

Where the SAG-AFTRA line asks if you have been sexually harassed.

I have been in this town for a while now. 10 years ago, Harvey asked me at a big dinner table what I do besides being hot. I knew not to answer. I knew where this was going. No one should know that I direct or that I did some acting in this town. It makes them think you want something. It makes you vulnerable and gives them power. I just ignored him. GOOD.

There was another girl at the table that stayed back with him that night. When leaving, I walked up to her and whispered in her ear: “I don’t know if you heard what he just said at the table, but I don’t think you should stay here alone with him.” She looked and me and said, “I know what I am doing.” Apparently, she does: She is a big A-list actress now.

He tried a second time when he saw me at a Sundance party. He came over to me and asked, “Do you want to come to the Waldorf Astoria with me?” I looked at him and asked: “What did you just say?” with total disbelief. He repeated, “Do you want to come to the Waldorf Astoria with me?” I repeated, “What did you just say?” this time, with an even more serious undertone as there was no doubt. I was shocked because there was nothing that could make him think in the slightest way that I would be up for it. He looked at me and said: “It looks like you want to stay here with your friends.” I just looked at him. Then he put his arm around me and pointed towards a producer that was there with a young girl: “See this guy. He is always here with another girl,” giving me a friendly warning about the predators in the room.

I got a call a few years later if I wanted to tell the private investigators “What an intelligent girl does with Harvey.” I refused. I just got lucky. It definitely helped that I was always unimpressed by power, by career, by men.

My first job in France at a production company where I was directing documentaries ended abruptly when the camera man was hitting on me during a shoot in the south of France. I came back and reported him immediately and demanded he should be fired. “He is an associate,” the female producer said. “You will have to go.” I went to work in fashion with women and gay men. I had 5 documentaries in the pipeline as a director that I gave up just like that.

But I had a choice and freedom.

Even if it means changing your profession.

I am an outsider and I always will be. I can’t relate to Hollywood cliches.

Yesterday, I felt I was in a script for Barbie. A normal night in Hollywood overhearing some conversations: “I thought I could have it all, but one morning, I realized it’s a man’s world. Women hate each other and if my husband loses a job, he is part of the boys’ club, he will get another one in no time.” Someone else mentioned: “For Harvey, it would have been 60:40 if he wasn’t so ugly.” The women laughed. “I heard his jail buddies published a book where he is taking revenge and exposing some famous celebrities.”

Post MeToo, we are now in the gray area. We have gone the other way, overturning Roe v. Wade, Johnny Depp as the reestablished hero winning over the pooping Amber, to Trump, who is like Teflon to every accusation. There is a culture that loves the next scoop, the next downfall, that kills their darlings with or without any justice.

It makes everyone a little bit scared of their past, but also vulnerable to exaggerations and the danger is that everyone is treated with the same hashtag, no matter if it sounds like a date gone wrong or a rape. It does question a culture where many look up to the rich, powerful and famous like they are gods. Where morals are less important than success and money and it does not seem to matter how people get to where they are or how they behave when they are at the top. Where beauty is more essential than education, intellect, vulnerability, truth and morals.

Why do we have conditions where more and more women don’t have a choice? The choice to do what they want with their bodies, leave a bad relationship, say no to someone in power, grow up confident and educated instead of being dumbed down by a culture that wants them to be sexy and perfect and that is so very boring. If acting becomes agist and sexist for women, if the beauty standards are different and every actress has to do plastic surgery to fit in a mold, we have moved away from a beautiful art form and from the diversity in seeing real faces, old and young, with different features. We have stripped away what makes us human and relatable.

The power to be more than our superficial shell.

Maybe post MeToo, we also have to look at the whole fabric of many marriages in Hollywood, the pretty young girl with the much older powerful man, is it love or fear? And we have to look at the shadows and the black sheep on both sides. In a land of sugar daddies, gold diggers, OnlyFans and casting couches, maybe there have also been some instances where the transactional nature became a way of life. Soulless from both sides: sex in exchange for money, a part in a movie or rent. “I sold my soul for this view,” I heard a beautiful woman say, overlooking the view of her Hollywood Hills mansion, well aware of the golden cage she is living in. All is left is to drown that feeling in alcohol or drugs. 

It is that toxic safety where the woman thinks she can’t leave because she is left with nothing.

Or the even bigger danger of a culture where people want to get ahead no matter how. The real “MeToos” will never speak up because they live under the roof of someone who abuses them daily. They might not realize that what they are living is not normal. Hollywood is a magnifying glass of pure capitalism without a heart of society, and the same things might happen in Berlin and anywhere else in the world.

Solving the complexity of these transactional dynamics that lead to MeToo is not a question of male and female as much as it is a question of power vs. poverty. I knew a young man who was in therapy for years because he slept with a powerful older woman in fear he might otherwise not get the investment he needed so badly. He knew could have said no – but for other people working in factories with a toxic boss, this is often a matter of survival.

If we give powerful people power, we are left with none.

There is no place where they can go and be taken care of, there is no German social structure where they can get health insurance and shelter or unemployment – and even if they did, it would never afford the lifestyle they grew accustomed to. We have to normalize talking about poverty and the lack of education and what it does to American culture. Maybe the new American dream should be real love and morals, not fame and money?

I am an optimist and I have hope that we can talk about how to rehabilitate men who maybe truly want to change or have changed. There are way too many MeToo guys who got away with it and there are still men out there who truly love women and want to protect them. But we have to be able to have a nuanced conversation and speak the truth.